Since last Thursday, when the story of the refusal of Tul Bahadur Pun’s immigration application broke, I’ve been contacted by a quite extraordinary range of people asking me to support his appeal – from people I’ve never met, to fellow bloggers, to personal friends, to TV presenters. Mr Pun has, intentionally or otherwise, become the cause célèbre of students, social networkers, and bloggers nationwide (examples: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10), but I’m not so sure about his case.

Tul Bahadur Pun is an 84 year-old Nepalese citizen. He’s lived in Nepal for most of his life, and, like may 84 year-olds, has developed a collection of medical conditions – in his case, heart problems, asthma, and diabetes. In his home country of Nepal, medication is not regularly available for his consumption, and so he’d like to move to Britain.

Mr Pun has no family in Britain. He has no-one to support him. He wants to move here to use the services of the NHS, and no doubt rely on Social Services for his social requirements. He is the classical immigrant ‘drain on society’ that the Daily Mail is forever seeking to vilify.

Yet a huge amount of support has surrounded Mr Pun’s case, as he fought for 18 years with the Indian Army and was awarded the Victoria Cross for his efforts with the allied forces during the Second World War. Does that entitle him to British citizenship? By current immigration rules? No. Morally? I’m not sure.

If you read around his case, you’ll come across a lot of emotive stuff about him being denied entry to Britain on the basis that he ‘failed to demonstrate strong ties to the UK’. In immigration terms, this means he’ll be reliant on the state, and so saying that receipt of the VC ‘demonstrates strong ties’ is misleading. You’ll also note that this was only one of several reasons why his application was denied, another being that it was not demonstrated that regular medication would actually improve his condition. Try to find the full text of his rejection has beaten me, which makes it difficult to make an informed judgement on the case.

But more sinister about the whole campaign for which Mr Pun has become the poster-boy is that thousands of people are being urged to sign a Downing Street petition calling for all Ghurkas to have the right to come and settle in the UK. People who support this one individual case are being urged to support a campaign that has quite different aims to merely allowing Mr Pun access to healthcare. It’s extrapolation from one emotive case to the cases of many, and however sympathetic I might feel towards Mr Pun, the underhand way in which his lawyers are playing this game is despicable.

If we open our doors to all Ghurkas, who else are we to admit? Is every US soldier that has served alongside British comrades in Iraq to be entitled to NHS care because of the shocking state of medical care in their home country? And besides, why are we limiting ourselves to those who have made a military contribution to the country? Are there not many others who’ve made an equally large contribution, with equally large personal sacrifice, who deserve citizenship too? I’m sure as Brits we have plenty of our own examples of Clara Maass, but our national obsession with remembering and honouring militarian sacrifices means that they are tragically forgotten. Many, many people risk their lives for the good of this country day after day – only the tiniest proportion of them are military personnel.

Mr Pun fought for the wellbeing of a grateful nation, and did so with exceptional bravery. Nonetheless, he did so voluntarily, of his own free will. He now has health problems unrelated to his service, but would like something back from the country for which he gave so much. I’m not sure we’re morally obliged to provide it, but it seems mean-spirited at best to deny citizenship and care to the exceptional Mr Pun, and I will make those views known to the relevant people in the relevant ways.

But who else, out of the thousands of people who apply for immigration each year, is exceptional? How do we define who ‘deserves’ our help and who doesn’t? The fact is, we condemn an awful lot of people to receiving poor medical care every year, and every one of those cases is a tragedy – but a necessary tragedy if we want to retain the level of health and social care we universally provide to citizens of our fine country.

The question is not about Mr Pun, and certainly not about allowing Mr Pun and all of his comrades have open access to the UK. The question is much bigger than that. And I have no answers.

Tony Blair wants to introduce legislation that will give the police the legal prerogative to stop anyone at any time for questioning, regardless of whether they have, or are suspected of, doing anything wrong. Should we fail to co-operate, we will be charged.

This will remove the right of citizens to go about their lives unhindered by the police. It removes the long-held principle of policing by consent. It fundamentally and irreversibly changes the nature of justice in the UK. It extends a two-tier system of control from prisons to the nation as a whole. Altogether, it just isn’t a good idea.

It’s such a bad idea, that outside of the Reid-Blair partnership, it’s hard to find anyone who supports the idea. Peter Hain – cabinet minister and deputy leadership candidate – has all but come out against it, the Lib Dems are against it, and the Conservatives are leaning in the same direction.

Yet despite the obvious problems with criminalising a nation, this plan has somehow made it to the stage of public consultation. Somehow, there’s a worrying disconnect between the top of government and the people – The government are hell-bent on winning an illogical war on ideology, while the people would quite like to stick with centuries of precedent of how a free country is run.

Gordon Brown has, of course, disappeared, and so cannot comment on this plan. But for the sake of us all, I hope his heads more screwed on than Blair’s, or I just don’t know where this madness will end…

There’s something worthy but slightly disturbing about this… A group of OAPs, lead by a nonagenarian, assaulting the pop charts to make the point that they, too, are people whose existence and emotions should not be forgotten.

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You can pre-order the single at sjhoward.co.uk/shop: It’s released on Monday – the same day as we’re all to be subjected to “A Song for Madeleine”, at 8am, on all commercial radio stations. I’m sure that’ll help.

Just to let you know, the site will be down for a little while from 7am UK time tomorrow (21st May) while a server upgrade takes place. The site should be back shortly afterwards. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Daytime soap Neighbours is moving from BBC One to Five – Quite a coup for the latter. But when I posted about this a while back, Lawrence reckoned it’d lose a lot of viewers if this happened. Will it?

I think this last went out of fashion in about 1997, but it seems to have sprung up again, and if I have to read one more thing like this or this, or have it rammed down my throat by another well-meaning friend, I might scream.

The etymology of words is rarely – in fact, almost never – acronymic.

To clear up the two above which seem to have been doing the rounds particularly virulently recently:

• ‘Chav’ is not derived from ‘Council House and Violent’, but rather the Romany word ‘chavi’, meaning ‘child’.
• ‘Fuck’ is not derived from ‘Fornication Under the Consent of the King’. Nor ‘For Use of Carnal Knowledge’ for that matter. It comes from the Middle English ‘fucken’, meaning to strike or penetrate.

And while we’re at it…

• ‘Posh’ is not derived from ‘Port Outward, Starboard Home’
• ‘Cop’ is not derived from ‘Constable On Patrol’
• ‘Tip’ is not derived from ‘To Insure Promptness’
• ‘Nylon’ is not derived from abbreviations of ‘New York’ and ‘LONdon’
• ‘News’ is not derived from ‘North, East, West, South’
• ‘Golf’ is not derived from ‘Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden’
• ‘Shit’ is not derived from ‘Ship High In Transit’

These words all have etymologies just like any other word, mostly derived from ancient or foreign languages.

There are exceptions: Radar does indeed come from ‘Radio Detection And Ranging’, and laser does derive from ‘Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation’. But these exceptions are few and far between.

Most etymology is not acronymic, and when it is, there’s usually no lengthy, contrived back-story – so if someone spouts one of these at you, please correct them, and maybe we can stop this incredibly irritating disease in its tracks.

Now running WordPress 2.2.

Gordon Brown has enough nominations to ensure that he will not face a challenger for the Labour leadership. So now he has to fight a six-week election against, erm, nobody. To me, that seems a bit silly. But maybe that’s why I’m not a politician.

Classic FM now has over half a million teenage listeners. Not all teenagers are heavy-metal pumping goths stalking the streets late at night with knives under their coats looking to jump old grannies.

Would anyone like to break the news to Mr Dacre? It’s have Mrs Lee-Potter turning in her grave.

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MTAS has been ditched. It will no longer be used to match junior doctors to specialist training posts. Ministers have realised that it is simply not fit for purpose.

Let me remind you what Patricia Hewitt said on Question Time on BBC One on 8th May 2007 (or remind yourself using the video mini-video on the right, or see the full-size version here):

If a minister is responsible for a major policy blunder or acts unethically then of course they should go.

Patricia Hewitt oversaw the introduction of a massively expensive computer system for matching junior doctors to specialist training posts. It has failed. It has spewed out intimate personal details of applicants onto publicly accessible parts of the web. And now it’s been ditched.

How is that not a ‘major policy blunder’?